Thoughts and opinions with a Southern flavor

Menu

Hope Springs

Good morning, y’all. So much going on here and so much to talk about that I forgot to update everyone about last Saturday night’s date night. I heard Bud Jr. is supposed to be coming over after while, I’m looking forward to that. BTW, it feels like Fall has arrived.

As outlined before, Mulva has tried to lessen the pangs of my house arrest by bringing the “outside world” to the confines of TackyToo for me. She came up with the idea of “date night”. We wait until after the closing of the rec room on Saturday, fire up the dvd player, and play a movie on the big screen just for the two of us. The date has had some unintended concesquences, but for the most part, it has been a success in making me feel less disconnected to the outside world. Mulva pops popcorn, brings in soda and snacks and sets the chairs just right for the optimum experience.

Actually, it’s better than the movie theater we go to. In our area there’s lots of old folks that go to movies. I guess most of them forget they’re not at home in their living room, or rec room as the case may be, and will just chatter on and on throughout the movie. The fact that most of them are hard of hearing just make matters worse. The fact that half of them couldn’t follow a plot if you gave them a 3D map pushes me to the breaking point sometimes. Going to the movies is not supposed to be one of my triggers. If I had a dime for every time I’ve heard some old timer say, “now who’s he”, “how does she know him”, “now, why’d he go and do that” , well let’s just say I’d be living in Monaco or some place like that. So all and all, the rec room date night has had some real positives. I know for sure I’d have never had the public display at the Blairsville cinema that I had during our private screening of Solitary Man.

Choosing the movie has been kind of a fun bit of experimentation. Mulva goes to WalMart every Saturday, just as regular as church on Sunday. She uses the $5 discount movie bin to make her selections. The typical routine revolves around her calling me and asking me if I’ve heard of the movie title, and if I have, I can pass judgement. If not, Mulva reads me the name of the actors and we go from there. In this particular instance, the name of the movie was “Hope Springs”, which I had not heard of. The stars were Tommy Lee Jones and Meryl Streep. Well, I hate Meryl Streep, ever since Woody Allen’s “Manhattan”. I guess she did too good a job of convincing me she was a b*tch and I’ve never forgotten it. Tommy Lee Jones, on the other hand, was the hero in one of my favorite movies, “No Country For Old Men”. So I’m thinking this is 50-50. Mulva thinks the cover looks nice, and so, like the title, I take a chance. My “Hope Springs” that Tommy Lee Jones will dispatch Meryl Streep like Javier Bardem does to his victims in “No Country”. Boy, was I in for a surprise.

“Hope Springs” is the tale of a middle age couple of upper middle income who aren’t having sex anymore. This is very disturbing to Meryl Streep apparently, and she seeks out the help of Steve Carrell from the Office to build a fire under Tommy Lee Jones. The happy couple head off to a “couple’s camp” run by Steve Carrell. Well, Tommy Lee Jones responds like any dutiful husband who has been given a cocktail of Viagra and psychedelic mushrooms would, and he becomes the horn dog that Meryl has always been looking for. They live happily ever after.

It’s hard to quantify “worst movie ever”, there are so many qualified applicants. Let me just say I took great pleasure in throwing the dvd in the 55 gallon drum we use to burn trash in here at TackyToo. I couldn’t risk letting this piece of propaganda fall into the hands of our impressionable youth.